I was born into Scientology in 1985. My father was (and is) an HGC auditor, my mother worked to support him (and me). My father joined the church when he was 18 along with his best friend (who is now the senior C/S at their org) after reading Dianetics while stoned and on acid. I don't know when exactly or why my mom joined.
When I was 5 I did my first Purif, I know this was a stat push; there was no reason that a five year old who had never had so much as a baby Tylenol would need a Purif. It was hell, I felt exhausted and sick the whole time I was on it. Eventually I figured out what to say to make them decide I was done.
My parents split up when my father started sleeping with their Scientology marriage counselor, who later became my stepmother. My mom packed us up and moved to LA and I moved back and forth every year or two between LA and San Francisco.
When I was 6 my step-father (who was ex-SO) told his auditor (out of session) that he had been molesting me when I was asleep. No one did anything. He did conditions from Treason. I found out later that he had done this to his girlfriend’s daughter while in the SO and that was why he was kicked out of the SO. (I'm not sure why he was never declared, but he is now a Kha-Kahn).
At some point (can’t remember exactly how old I was)my step-father told me a story about Scientology. I believe I asked him what we, as Scientologists were supposed to believe in as far as how human beings came to be. He told me that three billion years ago, in a galaxy far far away where thetans roamed free without their meat bodies, there lived a galactic overlord. The Galactic overlord was not nice. He was a BIIIG SP. He had an overpopulation problem in his galaxy, and one day he was deciding how to solve this problem when suddenly..YES! the perfect Evil-Genius idea struck him! So he gathered up all the criminals, and artists and free thinkers and such and shipped them all of to Earth where he put them all into volcanoes and blew them up. But he didn’t stop there! THEN he put all the stunned and confused thetans into implant stations and flashed pictures and spun them around (that’s why I wasn’t allowed to ride the merry-go-round at the park) until they were so confused and brainwashed that they thought nothing of being put into meat bodies and left on Earth.
It was not until much later, after I left Scientology and started looking online that I realized that that story was OT3! The Wall of Fire, which at one time had seemed like an amazing, wonderful, mysterious & slightly scary thing was really just an episode of The Outer Limits that was too bad to air.

I was told I needed another Purif when I was 10. I managed to get out in two weeks this time.
When I was living in San Francisco with my dad and stepmother things were very different. Life revolved around Scientology and staff. The church has fully supported this, even threatening my mother with a declare if she continued to write reports or seek any ethics action. You see, my mother had (and has) a tendency to stir things up and cause a fuss when things are unjust or incorrect, and so she wasn’t very well liked by the Org.
My dad and step-mom got along perfectly, had a squeaky-clean image at the church and were admired by most of the public and church members as well as all of the staff. I tried very hard to be a good scientologist kid, but wasn't very good at it. The kids my age who had parents on staff were creepy. I secretly hated going on course or in session. There was a lot about Scientology that I liked and agreed with, but there was this whole other part to it that to me, just seemed off. I felt like, some of the ways that people were treated were unfair.
To this day, I feel like certain aspects of my upbringing have been ingrained to the point that they have stunted my emotional development. For example, Scientologists believe that sympathy is low on the tone scale. Because of this, I never received any sympathy growing up, and was taught that sympathy was a very bad thing to feel for someone else. Now, as an adult I have a very hard time feeling sympathetic for others. I dread any situation where an expression of sympathy is required because the concept is alien to me. I am slightly disgusted when others show sympathy toward me. I cannot interject myself into a conversation, until all other parties have completed their statements, because I cannot “cut comm.”. The list goes on, but I’ve been brought up not to think too much, or I’ll go “out lists” and get sick.
When I was 9 or 10 I got very sick. I had a fever of 105 and was hallucinating. My parents left me home alone all day because they had to be on post at the org. I was given no medicine, just some herbal tinctures and vitamins prescribed by the MLO (who had no medical training other than LRH’s highly questionable medical theories). I pulled through after about three weeks luckily.
When I was 15 a Sea Org recruit mission came to our org armed with (of course) a very charming super hot recruiter. He tried desperately for two weeks to recruit me, as I was one of the few eligible people around. The night before the mission was supposed to leave he called me at home and told me that if I came to LA with them he could request time off and he and I could hang out, plus I could visit my mom and brother. So being and incredibly naive 15 year old with a crush, I went.
On the way we picked up another girl who was about 17. When we got there we got a tour and had some lunch and it was all good, then we were taken into an office and told to sign our contracts, we both refused. Then we were talked to for 6 more hours with no food or rest from our trip. Finally around midnight we were taken to a really seedy hotel on Sunset and left to our own devices. We went to bed, and they came and got us the next morning. This time they separated us and divided into teams. I was hard sold and flat out lied to for the entire rest of the day. I hadn't been allowed to call my mother and had hardly even eaten and was starting to freak out a little. Finally we returned to our hotel around 11 at night. The same thing happened the next day, and I finally crumbled, signed the contract and took all my tests.
But thankfully, being 15 they needed both of my parents consent. My mom wouldn't allow it. She came to the base and threw a shit-fit. Only when she threatened them with legal action (my mother was a pariah to the church already by then) did they release me to her, or even let me see her.
Life went on, I moved back with my dad when I was 16. All was good, I went on course to please them, and my dad audited me(this was very awkward to say the least, I remember having the question “Recall sex” on my ARC SW, and having to tell him in extreme detail all of my sexual escapades).The rest of the time I got to have a normal life and normal friends. I had gotten them to let me go to public school. Then they caught me smoking pot with my boyfriend (whom they had forbidden me to see due to the fact that he was a WOG) and cut me off from all of my friends. I was never allowed at home alone. This meant being at the org with them all of the time. I was pulled out of school and put on independent study so I wouldn’t come into contact with any “WOGS” (non-Scientologists).
When I was 18 I joined staff at the Org my father and stepmother worked at along with my best friend who had been sent by her mother from out of state to stay with relatives and be saved by Scientology, so we were in pretty much the same boat. (We made a "if you jump, I'll jump” agreement). I didn’t want to join until I had gotten my GED (I had been pulled off independent study so that I could focus on taking courses all the time). Unfortunately I was convinced that no, they needed staff members NOW. I wanted to placate my parents, and I was promised that I would be given time off to study and to take my GED. I was never allowed time off for this, and thus never got my GED.
I was the basic courses admin (which isn't actually a real post) for a few months until the OES blew staff. He had been holding Treasury from above, and all of a sudden, I was re-posted as the Treasury Secretary. I had no idea what I was doing and had no one under me. I tried my damnedest to put in policy and clean up Treasury, which had been basically non-existent other than payroll for about 8 years.
I actually did okay. I got it under control and operating, but now that I had all of the confusion out of the way I started noticing some HUGE pink elephants, red flags, and odd discrepancies. I started trying to fix them; eventually I was told by several of my senior execs to basically stop sniffing around or else. I started getting bogus Knowledge Reports and so was distracted from my sniffing out of BS by having to spend all my time in ethics, which, of course, kept me from doing my post and lead to, (any guesses?) YES! More KR’s !!
While all of this was going on a mission came to our org and we were told we were going to raise millions of dollars, buy a new building and have an "Ideal Org" we were one of the pilot orgs for the project.
This project was an inhumane torturous nightmare. We had to stay all day on our posts then all night to work until the wee hours of the morning; a lot of this was extremely physically demanding work. We had to work double shift (day and foundation hours) through our lunch break, and on the weekends, if we asked for a day or a few hours off we were often refused, or at least guilt tripped and shamed for it.
I was making about $25 per week, sharing a tiny studio with 4 other staff members and trying to live in one of the most expensive cities in the country. My rent was $250…to this day I’m not sure how I managed to stay alive.
All along there had been fundraising going on which consisted of repeatedly harassing the wealthier public to make donations, hard selling them for hours at a time.
I got some money from a car accident settlement that I had intended to use for college. The building fund reg convinced me that, as a staff member my investment would return to me because in the new building we'll be able to get more people in and I'll get more pay. We were supposed to go Saint Hill Size and we'd all be rich, but not without the money to get us there. Plus I would be considered very upstat and not only would I please my dad and step mom, but I would be more able to get time off. So I donated $5,000. I spent another $4,000 on 25 hours of auditing (I got a staff discount) because I was convinced that I was totally FUBAR mentally.
While I was on staff I went on a date with a staff member in the TTC. We were in my apartment and he raped me. I wrote a report about what happened and gave it to the Ethics officer. Later that day I was called into the SSO's office. She got very angry and told me I was lying and that I had to be handled in ethics or kicked off of staff before I started to spread STD's around the org. I was very confused and hurt by this at first, this person had known me since I was a baby and I felt like she was almost family. Then I realized that the org was on a big phase in the SO mission to get auditors so we could go Saint Hill Size. The guy was one of their most promising trainees. Somehow a twisted version of the story got spread all over the org (this should have been an extremely confidential HCO matter) Suddenly my friends and family and everyone that I had known my whole life started turning against me.
So I left staff.
*NOTE: I later had a boyfriend who was the D of P. He looked back on the meter check done on the guy and found that he had had a dirty needle through the entire thing (a dirty needle means you’re hiding something). I was told at the time that he had passed this meter check with flying colors. Perhaps his still very close to him ex-girlfriend who administered the meter check had something to do with this.

I moved back to LA and wasn’t involved with the church. For a year or so. Then I got a call from someone on staff in SF that had been a very close friend of mine. She wanted me to come look at joining staff again. I was going to be in the area anyway for a visit so I agreed to come by the org and say hi. I had another nightmare recruiting session when I got there. I was apologized to profusely by all those who had wronged me in the past. I joined staff again; supposedly to just finish the six months I had left on my 2-½ year contract. I really just didn’t want a freeloader debt and I missed my old friends.
I had walked into another staff nightmare. We were now in the new “Ideal Org” and I was given the post of D/ED’s O/O (a pretty high-on-the-totem-pole post). However there was no hatting to be found. There had never been an O/O in the org before. No one really knew what I was supposed to do. I scoured policies but couldn’t find much. I started getting written up for being idle on post…even though no one could tell me what it was I was supposed to do on post anyway. I was depressed, and felt sick all the time. I had developed some sort of respiratory condition. I was in the middle of an auditing action on ARC SW that I had been in the middle of for two years; I couldn’t get into session to handle it though because I was technically downstat. Then they decided I needed another Purif (despite being mid another action). We were trying to get to SHS and desperately needed more purifs. This one took me two months. I felt awful and lethargic the whole time, I also developed horrible cystic acne of some kind (I’m an esthetician now and still don’t know exactly what it was and have never seen anything like it since) That stayed for years after and when I finally got rid of it, left scars all over my face. I had been getting into modeling before this and was with a notable agency that had to drop me because I couldn’t get jobs because of this. It has taken months of intensive skin treatments that, were I not an esthetician, would have cost me thousands of dollars to get my face almost back to normal.
All the while I was getting more and more fed up. I had started to not care anymore whether I got into trouble, or got declared. When something was wrong, or unjust I raised a huge fuss about it. I spent all of my time in ethics screaming at and bullbaiting the EO to do his job and handle all the weird stuff that was going on, and he spent all his time giving me sec checks (nothing ever came up) and threatening to declare me. I got sick of it all and decided my time could be better spent, so I left staff again, this time for good. I had started a leaving staff routing form months before, but no one was willing to put me through the RF, so one day I just didn’t go back. The EO came to my house every day for weeks and I simply didn’t answer the door. He even sat outside on several separate occasions for hours at a time waiting for me to come out and telling me that he could hear me and knew I was home. Eventually he got tired of going to my house everyday, and I was finally free.

A little while after I left staff, my dad called out of the blue (I hadn't been in contact with him for at least six months, and had moved back to So. Cal). He told me that he had injured his back and that after talking it over with the HAS (also my step-mom) had decided that it was best if he disconnect from me as I was making him PTS. I don't exactly know what the real reason was. I hadn't been in contact with him, so I couldn't be his PTS item. We got along well, and had good conversations when we did talk to one another. I can only assume it had something to do with me leaving staff, although as far as I know I’m still not declared.

Now I live across the country. I haven't spoken to any of my family or any of my old friends in over two years. At first it was extremely awkward adjusting to a normal life after being immersed in Scientology my whole life. I'm still realizing that certain things that I always assumed to be correct or true, don't actually really make any sense, I just never questioned them because it was what I had been taught my whole life. It's like living in a whole different world sometimes. I'm so used to everyone working the Scientology way that now I'm lost a lot of the time, it's like I don't really know how to be a regular person around regular people. This has gotten much easier with time, and continues to get easier every day.
There is a lot more to this story, but it would be impossible for me to go over every incident and fucked up thing that happened along the way without writing a book. Which I might do eventually.

Quite interesting to read a story from someone my own age. Makes it easier to tell what has been "missed" due to a Scilon upbrining. (I am here as Anon and not ex, in case your thinking "wtf?" right now.)

However, what interested more was the skin condition you suffered during the last run of purif. As a molecular biologist it's of interest to uncover the consequences of Hubbards bullshit medical practices. Can you give any detail as to what was used during this period, anything beyond the usual sauna and Niacin overdose?

The most important thing to learn about Life, the Universe, and Everything, is firstly; the answer is 42, and secondly; how utterly ridiculous it truly is

Thank you for posting your story, Rose129. You suffered immensely at a very tender age. Glad you are out and moving on with life in the "real world." If you ever decide to write that book you mentioned, I would be very interested in reading it.

It's really shocking to see that in orgs other than the SO there was even worse stuff happening... thank u for sharing ur story and i'm really sorry for everything u had to go through... rape is something that a lot of men get away with if they are on a high post... it's horrible...

Thank you for sharing your story. It's hard to know that other people went through such bad experiences, but at the same time it's a wonderful relief to know we are not alone. I'm glad you could write your story and hope it made you feel better. It's still amazing to me how similar so many of our lives were, especially after years of thinking I was the only person so miserably unhappy.

Perhaps it will make you feel better to know that I also had trouble with the differences between Scientology "culture" and the regular world. Things like giving sympathy and "comm cycles" are two good examples. (I now make sure to give my toddler as much sympathy as he wants when he is hurt, and it reminds me of the Scientology crap.) Just learning to interact with people without looking like I was from Mars was difficult. I'm still working on it, although it is a million times better. The first and most important step is to be AWARE that there is a difference, or something that needs improving. Once you know it just takes practice. I'm sure you will be alright with time.

Somebody has to speak for these people.... no more running. I aim to misbehave.... If you can't do something smart, do something right. (Serenity)